The Little Engine That Couldn't

One of the mosquitoes flying around the libertarian movement, making annoying buzzing noises, is an odd outfit run by Stefan Molyneux. Molyneux considers himself something of a guru, perhaps even a messiah, who seems intent on building a personal cult around himself and his bizarre theories. I've listened to the man and his logic is sincerely sophmoric, his historical foundations are virtually, and his psychological theories are actually destructive. He is a messiah in search of a cult to follow him—the L. Ron Hubbard of extremist libertarianism.

This does not mean libertarianism per se is extreme. That really depends on the temperament of the individual. But it does mean that his theories are rather extreme, irrationally grounded, and sound more like religious dogma than logical conclusions.

One of his major claims is that his site is the largest philosophical discussion on the net. Not even close. Actually it fails on two counts. First, what he spews out is hardly coherent philosophy. It's more corny, amateurish narcissism than anything else. But, even if we stretch philosophy so broad as to include his discussions, he is pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to readers. The above shows traffic ratings comparing Molyneux to two genuinely libertarian sites—the Cato Institute and Reason magazine. If you look at the very bottom of the graph you will periodically see a very tiny blue line. That blue line is Molyneux's website on its better days. Meanwhile note that Cato and Reason are hovering well above his scarce appearances on the scale.

The most thorough site taking on this clay-footed messiah is FDR Liberated, which exposes the cultish wackiness of Molyneux. You can find that at www.fdrliberated.com. You might want to start with this series.

Marriage by the numbers.

The 2010 census says the US population was 308,746,000. Of course, it has changed a bit since then but for my purposes is good enough.

What percentage of Americans have the legal right, even if they don't have the inclination, to enter a same-sex marriage?

As of now, citizens in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont have that right. Republicans are attempting to reimpose regulations in New Hampshire and Iowa to strip away that right. But it doesn't appear to me they will succeed.

According to the Census the population in those states amount to 33,774,000. That is about 11% of all Americans have this right as of now.

It is expected that the Washington state Senate will pass a marriage equality bill in the next few hours. The House will follow and the total should rise to 40,499,000 or 13% of the population. There is a very good chance that Maryland will also support marriage equality in the next few weeks, though not as good as in Washington, where it appears to be a done-deal. If Maryland joins in granting marriage freedom to same-sex couples the number of Americans with this right will grow to 46,273,000 or 15% of the population.

Monkey Sex Senator Refuses to Back Down

The Republican state Senator, Stacey Campfield, is not backing down from his insane claims about AIDS. Campfield said that a gay pilot had sex with a monkey and then infected men and that the gay community spread AIDS to everyone else. We dissected Campfield's absurd claims here.

He said it is "virtually, if not completely impossible to contract AIDS outside of blood transfusions through heterosexual sex. It's virtually impossible." Now he tries to claim that comment was out of context and that he was referring to risks and "The odds of a regular man getting it from a regular woman are very low."

First, notice something there. He implies that men contract the disease from women not that men can infect women. Any individual can contract the disease from any other individual. It is not spread by gay men or women, it is spread by men and women, gay and straight. It is spread by human beings. I guess we could we could add "sexist" to a description to Campfield. It is not just gay men he's bigoted against. By the way, Mr. Campfield is a conservative Republican in his mid 40s who has never been married. Given the past history of raging anti-gay conservatives that is not a good sign for him.

In the interview Campfield claims that the facts continue to back him up. No, they don't. He's just making that up. He claims that the book And the Band Played On supports the claim that a pilot got HIV from having sex with monkeys. The book says no such thing. Note that the Senator makes no attempt to quote the book. He can't. He is taking half facts from dozens of places and combining them according to his own personal bigotry and theories. No one has ever claimed that sex with a monkey started AIDS.

Also pay attention to his use of "regular" man. He was asked what he meant by "regular" and he said "someone who is not from Africa, someone who is not a homosexual, someone who is not an IV drug user, someone who is not sleeping with someone who is one of those things." Okay. So, by regular he means white straight Americans and everyone else is not regular. Apparently marrying someone from Africa also means you are not "regular." Does this sound a tad bit racist? This man is walking stereotype of the Southern redneck, conservative Republican with firm opinions totally unrelated to the facts.